Page 15 of Ten Mountain Men

Grumpy Luke is sitting at the long, gleaming wooden table, wolfing down one of the biggest sandwiches I’ve ever seen outside of that competitive eating show I worked on when I first started out in the business, straight out of college.

He doesn’t look at me, or any of us, just takes another bite. His one bite is about the size of an entire meal for me, and I don’t exactly eat like a bird. He looks grumpier than ever.

“Bath’s ready,” Clay calls, his booming voice rattling the walls and everything on them as he comes out of a room that I hope is indeed a bathroom. “And I volunteer if you need someone to wash your back or, y’know, any other hard-to-reach parts.”

Oh my Lord, is he flirting with me? My cheeks are warming up.

As Hunter carries me through the most cluttered, congested dwelling I have ever been inside, my bare toes brush against the plethora of objects littering the surfaces, kicking up dust. I recoil, tucking myself tighter against Hunter’s rock-solid pecs.

The sheer mayhem makes me want to leap from Hunter’s arms, spin around, and bolt—and I would, if it weren’t for my ankle.

But how can I say, “Um, changed my mind, your mess is gross, can you please carry me back to my car after all?”

They’re trying to be hospitable and I can’t be rude.

It’s entirely possible I’m being too harsh.

Homey. That’s what Winnie would call it.

Yeah, homey like a hurricane.

It’s a style I could only describe as Junkstore Chaos Core.

Winnie would say something like, “It’s just in need of a good tidy, a coat of paint, some good ol’ feng shui, and a well-planned curio wall!”

But she would be wrong. It’s a magpie nest of a house. A labyrinth of crap. There is not enough feng shui or paint in the world. It’s in need of an industrial-sized dumpster. Or two. How long did it take them to accumulate this much stuff? Decades, I would guess.

We reach the bathroom door. Cat-Eyed Lynx, Wiseass Rapunzel-Hair Clay, Hunter, and the one Luke told to shut up—Brooks, I think it was—are all saying things to me, but their voices are a distant rumble in my ears that I can’t quite process because I’ve finally snapped. I’ve reached the limit of what I can handle. It’s sensory overload. It’s all too much. I’m actually ready to run the second Hunter puts me down.

I test my foot, straightening and flexing it. It makes me cringe, and I let out a little yelp. Okay. So maybe ready to run in theory only. Damn.

Hunter carries me into the bathroom and gently deposits me on the toilet seat top. I do not want to see what it looks like underneath the lid.

The bathroom is small, and just as overstuffed and chaotic as the rest of the house, with items falling out of the rustic wood cabinets and littering the edge of the oversized porcelain tub.

The only things I can see that make a lick of sense to me are the towels—ten of them, hand embroidered with color-coded names in a neat script, hanging in a tidy row on color-coded hooks. Those I can get behind, but they seem so out of place here. Curious.

Clay sees me eyeing the towels and offers me the use of his. “I’ll never wash it again once it’s dried you off,” he swears jokingly with a playful wink. At least…I hope he’s joking.

“Oh look, bubbles,” Brooks says, his grumbly voice filled with amusement.

I look into the tub, where he’s gazing at the piles of frothy white bubbles with a faint smile barely visible under all his beard. I desperately want to ask him how old he is, how long it’s been since he shaved his beard or cut his hair. Has he ever entered civilization at all?

“All set then?” Lynx asks. “Need anything else?”

Oh God yes.

“How thoughtful of you to ask,” I say sincerely.

I make a mental list. I need my charcoal loofah, the only type of shampoo that doesn’t make my hair frizz, the pricey but worth it hypoallergenic body wash that smells delicious and doesn’t make my skin break out, a microfiber hair towel, and some cute, clean, dry clothes to put on after I get out of the bath…

But of course there’s no way these men actually have any of those things, and I don’t want to put them out by telling them I need my bag from my campsite, so after a quick glance around the bathroom, I say, trying not to be too high-maintenance, “Just some shampoo and conditioner, please. Leave-in, if you have it. And maybe a spare towel, if you have extra?”

Lynx blinks at me from under long, thick lashes, the kind that most women would die for and most men never appreciate.

“Oh, uh, I don’t think we have anything like that. But—” Hunter gives me a smile that makes the horror he just uttered almost worth it. How can they not have anything like shampoo and conditioner with all the hair between them? “My towel is fresh off the clothesline and you can use it.”

His arms are long enough to stretch from one wall to the other, so all he has to do is stick out his hand to touch the towel that hasHUNTERembroidered in blue.

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